Wyckoff, Franklin Lakes Students Win Prestigious Fulbright Award

WYCKOFF, NJ — Two local students have earned the prestigious Fulbright Award for the 2019-20 academic year.

Alexis Rodda of Wyckoff and Anna Giarratana of Franklin Lakes are alumni of the Bergen Academies' Academy of Medical Science Technology.

Rodda is an opera singer enrolled at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York's doctorate of music program. She has a master's degree in vocal performance from Mannes College.

Rodda has won various awards for her singing, including from the Metropolitan Opera National Council. She sings professionally at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

Giarratana is a medical student at Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She will graduate with a doctorate in Neuroscience next month. She has a master's degree in Biomedical Science from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Giarratana will use her Fulbright year to conduct post-doctoral research at the University of Zurich. She will work at the Zurich Center for Neuroeconomics. Using state-of-the-art brain imaging technologies, she will investigate the brain functioning of healthy individuals who have schizotypal personality traits, or people who have social and interpersonal deficits without having a diagnosed mental disorder. The work will help advance the understanding of the spectrum of mental illness, help pinpoint brain regions responsible for these deficits, and identify novel therapeutic targets.

Roddan will focus her research on the works of Viennese composer Egon Lustgarten, a prolific operatic composer who fled to the United States in 1939 during Nazism's rise in Europe.

Roddan will present a concert series in venues throughout Vienna highlighting his work and the work of other exiled composers while in residence at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

The Fulbright Award is a scholarship established by then-Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas in 1946. The award supports activities and projects that recognize and promote the critical relationship between educational exchange and international understanding, in addition to the intellectual merits of the proposals.

Email: daniel.hubbard@patch.com